World Theatre Day 2026

Friday, 27 March 

[World Theatre Day was created in 1961 by the International Theatre Institute (ITI), and is celebrated annually on March 27 by global ITI centers and the international theatre community. Various national and international theatre events are organized to celebrate an international message and remarks from national cultural leaders. The Global Theater Initiative (GTI), a partnership between Theatre Communications Group (TCG) and the Laboratory for Global Performance & Politics (the Lab), encourages U.S. theatres, individual artists, institutions and audiences to celebrate the occasion annually on the 27th of March. 

[Since 1962, World Theatre Day has been celebrated by the circulation of the World Theatre Day Message through which, at the invitation of ITI, a figure of world stature shares their reflections on the theme of Theatre and a Culture of Peace. The first World Theatre Day international message was written by Jean Cocteau in 1962. Succeeding honorees have included Arthur Miller (1963), Ellen Stewart (1975), Vaclav Havel (1994), Ariane Mnouchkine (2005), Sultan bin Mohammad Al Qasimi (2007), Augusto Boal (2009), Dame Judi Dench (2010), Jessica A. Kaahwa (2011).

[In GTI's role as the U.S. center of ITI, a U.S.-based author is chosen to circulate a national message for World Theatre Day in addition to the international message. Past U.S. honorees have included Mildred Ruiz-Sapp and Steven Sapp (2021), Indigenous Direction (2019), Heather Raffo (2018), Kwame Kwei-Armah (2017), Ping Chong (2016), Diane Rodriguez (2014), Jeffrey Wright (2011) and Lynn Nottage (2010). 

[In 2022, for the first time, GTI invited a U.S.-based Emergent Artist to pen a message and that author was storyteller/activist Jasmin Cardenas. This is now a continuing feature of the U.S. celebration of World Theatre Day.

[To learn more about World Theatre Day, visit the official website at www.world-theatre-day.org.  —"About World Theatre Day,” Theatre Communications Group website.]

INTERNATIONAL MESSAGE
by Willem Dafoe

[Willem Dafoe (actor, theater maker; b. 1955), Artistic Director of the Theatre Department at La Biennale di Venezia, was among the founding members of The Wooster Group.  Based at The Performing Garage in New York (1977-2004), they developed a distinctive approach to avant-garde theater.  

[He then went on to collaborate with Robert Wilson (1941-2025; director and playwright of experimental theater), Marina Abramovic (b. 1946; Serbian-born conceptual and performance artist), Richard Foreman (1937-2025; avant-garde experimental playwright and director; founder of the Ontological-Hysteric Theater), and Romeo Castellucci (b. 1960; Italian theater director, playwright, artist, and designer).  

[In the early 1980s, he also began working in cinema and since earned international acclaim for his versatility across both independent and mainstream films.  He has received four Academy Award nominations and was awarded the Coppa Volpi for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival in 2018.  

[As an actor, he’s received numerous accolades including nominations for four Academy Awards (1987 Best Supporting Actor nomination for Platoon [1986]; 2001 Best Supporting Actor nomination for Shadow of the Vampire [2000]; 2018 Best Supporting Actor nomination for The Florida Project [2017]; 2019 Best Actor nomination for At Eternity’s Gate [2018]), a BAFTA Award, four Critics' Choice Movie Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, four Critics' Choice Movie Awards, and five Screen Actors Guild Awards.  

[He received four Independent Spirit Award nominations winning twice for Best Supporting Male for his roles in Shadow of the Vampire and The Lighthouse (2019).  On 8 January 2024, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

[Dafoe’s commitment to theater continues to shape his artistic vision and performance practice.]

I am an actor principally know as a film actor. But my roots are deeply in the theatre. I was a member of the Wooster Group from 1977-2003 creating and performing original pieces at The Performing Garage in NYC and touring throughout the world. I have also worked with Richard Foreman, Robert Wilson and Romeo Castellucci. Now, I am the Artistic Director of The Venice Theatre Biennale. This appointment, the events in the world, and my desire to return to theatre work has strongly formed my belief in the unique positive power and importance of the theatre.

At the humble beginning of my time in The Wooster Group, the NY based theatre company, we would often get very little public at some of the performances at our theatre. Often the rule was if there were more performers than public we could choose to cancel. But we never did. Many of the company were not trained in the theatre but were people of different disciplines that came together to make theatre—so “the show must go on” was not really our mantra, however we felt an obligation to keep our meeting with the public.

We would also often rehearse during the day and in the evening show the material as a work in progress. We would sometimes spend years on a show while sustaining ourselves with touring of older performances. Working years on a piece would often become tedious for me and I found rehearsals somewhat trying but these works in progress showings were always exciting—even if the tiny public was a damning judgment of the level of interest in what we were doing. It just made me realize how no matter how few people, the audience as witness gave the theatre its meaning and life.

Like the sign in the gambling hall says “YOU MUST BE PRESENT TO WIN.” Shared experience in real time of an act of creation, that may be scored and designed but is always different, is certainly the obvious strength of the theatre. Socially, politically, theatre has never been so important and vital to our understanding of ourselves and the world.

The “elephant in the room” is new technologies and social networking, which promises connection but seemingly has fragmented and isolated people from each other. I use my computer daily even if I have no social media, I have even googled myself as an actor, and have also consulted AI for information. But you have to be blind not to recognize that human contact risks being replaced by relationships with devices. While some technology can serve us well the problem of not knowing who’s on the other end of the circle of communication runs deep and contributes to a crisis of truth and reality. While the internet can raise questions, it very seldom captures a sense of wonder that theatre creates. A wonder based in attention, engagement and a spontaneous community of those present in a circle of action and response.

As an actor and theatre maker I remain a believer in the power of theatre. In a world that seems to get more divisive, controlling and violent, our challenge as theatre makers is to avoid the corruption of theatre solely as a commercial enterprise dedicated to the entertainment by distraction or as the dry institutional preserver of traditions, but rather to foster its strength to connect peoples, communities, cultures and above all to question where we are going. . . . . .

Great theatre is about challenging how we think and encouraging us to imagine what we aspire to.

We are social animals and designed biologically for engagement with the world. Every sense organ is a gateway for encounter and through this meeting we achieve greater definition of who we are. Through storytelling, aesthetics, language, movement, scenography— theatre as a total art form can make us see what was, what is and what our world could be.

*  *  *  *
U.S. MESSAGE
by Moisés Kaufman 

[Moisés Kaufman (Venezuelan-American theater director, filmmaker, and playwright; founder of Tectonic Theater Project based in New York City, and co-founder of Miami New Drama in Florida; b. 1963) received the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama (b. 1961; 44th President of the United States: 2009-17) in 2016.  

[Kaufman’s a Tony and Emmy-nominated director and playwright whose Broadway credits include Paradise Square (2022; 10 Tony Award nominations), Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song (2018), Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo with Robin Williams (2011; Pulitzer Prize Finalist), The Heiress with Jessica Chastain (2012), 33 Variations with Jane Fonda (2009; wrote and directed, Tony nomination Best Play), and Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife (2003; Tony Award, Pulitzer Prize).

[Other productions include: Pulitzer Prize finalist Here There Are Blueberries (2018), Velour: A Drag Spectacular (2024), Las Aventuras de Juan Planchard (2023), Seven Deadly Sins (2021; Drama Desk Award).  He is the co-writer of The Laramie Project (2000) and the writer of Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1997).  He’s an Obie and Drama Desk award winner and a Guggenheim fellow.]

Hello everyone, I’m Moisés Kaufman, I am a playwright, director and Artistic Director of Tectonic Theater Project and I am honored to have been asked to address you on World Theater Day 2026. 

Hola, soy Moisés Kaufman, soy escritor, director y director artístico de Tectonic Theater Project. Y me siento honrado de haber sido elegido para dirigirme a ustedes en este Día Mundial del Teatro 2026.

There are moments in history when the world feels as though it is breaking apart — when language itself becomes unstable, when facts are contested, when communities fracture along lines of fear and suspicion. In such moments, we may ask ourselves: What is the role of theatre?

I was born in Venezuela and came to the United States as an immigrant. To leave one’s country is to experience rupture — of language, of belonging, of certainty.

It was through this experience of displacement that I began to understand theatre not simply as performance, but as a space of encounter. A place where identities can be examined rather than assumed. A place where complexity is not feared, but honored. My life between cultures taught me that the act of listening across difference is both fragile and transformative.

When we founded Tectonic Theater Project, we were driven by a simple curiosity: How do we understand the world through the stories of others? How do we gather narratives from the real world, fragments of memory, contradiction, silence — and shape them into something that allows us to see more clearly?

So we asked how a group of artists might come together not merely to interpret a story, but to examine the forces beneath it, to gather voices, to sit with contradiction.

This process has taught me something essential: theatre is not the art of certainty. It is the art of inquiry.

Theatre, at its most urgent, is an act of investigation.

When we created The Laramie Project from the voices of a small American town grappling with an act of violence, we discovered that the stage could become a civic space. Audiences did not come simply to watch; they came to witness. They came to confront grief, anger, confusion, compassion — sometimes all at once. The theatre became not a courtroom and not a pulpit, but a gathering place.

That experience changed me. It revealed that theatre can hold complexity without sacrificing community.

In our time, public discourse often demands that we choose sides quickly. It rewards outrage and punishes nuance. Yet theatre insists on something different. It asks us to dwell in ambiguity. It reminds us that a single story rarely contains the whole truth. It invites us to encounter the humanity of those we might otherwise reduce to categories.

This is not a passive act. It is a courageous one.

To sit in the dark beside strangers and listen deeply is a form of resistance. It resists isolation. It resists dehumanization. It resists the temptation to turn away.

In a world mediated by screens and algorithms, this shared tribal experience is radical. It cannot be paused, scrolled, or muted. It unfolds in real time, and we are accountable to one another within it.

I have often reflected on the word “tectonic.” It refers to the forces beneath the earth’s surface — slow, invisible pressures that eventually reshape landscapes. Theatre works in a similar way. It may not create immediate transformation, but it exerts pressure. It shifts perception. It unsettles assumptions. It opens cracks through which empathy can enter.

And empathy is not a sentimental concept. It is an ethical practice.

When actors embody other people — when they carry their words, their cadences, their hesitations — they ask us to imagine what it feels like to inhabit another life. That imaginative act is foundational to democracy. A democratic society depends upon our capacity to see beyond ourselves.

Peace, too, depends on that capacity.

Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is the presence of understanding. It is the willingness to engage difference without erasure. It is the courage to hear a story that challenges our own.

Theatre does not provide solutions to global crises. It does something both more modest and more profound: it creates the conditions for intimate encounters.

Within the space of a stage, we practice holding multiple truths. And we train in empathy. 

These practices are not separate from civic life; they are essential to it.

On this World Theatre Day, I think of theatre-makers across the globe — in grand institutions and in makeshift spaces, in cities and in villages, in times of stability and in times of conflict. I think of artists who rehearse under threat, who speak when silence would be safer, who gather communities even when resources are scarce. Their work affirms something fundamental: the human need to tell stories and to hear them is irrepressible.

Today, let us honor the rehearsal rooms where questions are asked with rigor and humility. Let us honor the actors who risk vulnerability. Let us honor the designers who shape worlds from light and shadow. Let us honor the crews and theater staffs that make the work possible.

And let us recommit ourselves to the slow, tectonic work of listening.

If the forces beneath the surface are powerful enough, landscapes shift.

May our stages continue to shift the landscape of the human heart.

Let us keep asking questions.
Let us keep listening.
Let us keep gathering in the dark — believing that when the lights rise, we may see one another more clearly.
Thank you.

*  *  *  *
U.S. EMERGENT ARTIST MESSAGE
by Banna Desta

[Banna Desta (she/they; late 20’s-early 30’s) is an Eritrean- and Ethiopian-American writer for the screen and stage who crafts stories about and for the African diaspora.  She is the author of The Abyssinians (Audible, 2024); Midnight in Abyssinia (La MaMa’s CultureHub, 2024); Red Taxi (2025); Bygone Fruit which premiered at the 2024 Women in Theater Festival (6-24 June 2024 in Greenwich Village, New York City) and Pining which premiered at Rattlestick Theater (New York City) and was published by Samuel French in 2019.  

[Desta’s work for the stage has been supported and workshopped by Atlantic Theater Company, The Apollo Theater, National Black Theatre, The New Group, and the Dramatists Guild Foundation.  She has held residencies at SPACE on Ryder Farm, Art Omi, Marble House Project, and Tofte Lake Center.  She was a staff writer for the BET+ series First Wives Club (Netflix Top Ten, 2019-22).  

[Desta has assisted multiple television series in both the writers’ room and on set, including FOX/NBC’s This Is Us (2016-22), and Amazon Prime’s Harlem (2021-25).  She’s held fellowships with Sun Valley Writers Conference, Marcie Bloom Fellowship in Film, and The Gotham Film and Media Institute.  She is a writing professor and arts educator at New York University, Rehabilitation through the Arts and Harlem Children's Zone.]

My name is Banna, and I am the emergent author for the International Theater Institute in the United States. Happy World Theater Day to theater makers across the country and around the world. It is my belief that storytelling is the bloodline of humanity, pumping empathy and understanding, reinforcing purpose and preserving culture and legacy in our hearts. Many of us have been shaped and inspired by the stories we’ve heard, whether they’re passed down from previous generations or absorbed through other mediums. Most forms of storytelling share theater’s DNA. They’re fleshed out through performance with tones of drama, comedy or both.

Coming from an Eritrean and Ethiopian household, storytelling was one of the ways I was able to hold on to my ancestral lineage being born and raised in the United States. Whether they were stories that illustrated the natural beauty and simplicity of African life or the tragedies of the civil war that delivered my parents to the U.S.[1974-91] , tales of the past were embedded in me and undoubtedly inspired me to indulge my own imagination and nurture my own creative inventions. They inspired me to explore my own history, sourcing facts to support the fiction in my plays The Abyssinians and Red Taxi, and influencing my love of realist fiction to write contemporary Black narratives in my new play, Nightlife. Like so many people in America, my life has been global and so, my stories reflect that.

Becoming a theatermaker wasn’t a straightforward journey, as the conventions of modern life felt like they required a more traditional vocation. I ignored the call to be an artist. However, in college, theater was my very first class, Monday mornings at 9am, my freshman year. It was there that I discovered Paula Vogel [b. 1951], re-explored Shakespeare, Moisés Kaufman and a number of other classic and contemporary artists and their work. No matter when their plays were published and how many years had passed since, their work felt urgent, and as a result so did my need to tell stories. I could no longer ignore the call. I took my writing more seriously, using it as a means of connecting with myself and sharing my work in the hopes of connecting with others.

Discovering theater was where my life felt most romantic, where I felt most comfortable to wrestle with the world’s competing contradictions. When I moved to New York to pursue storytelling more seriously, I was astonished by the depth of artistry, the grit and grace of theater’s artisans and the immense compassion theater inspired in me. I sat in the audience of plays like Is God Is at Soho Rep [by Aleshea Harris, 2018], In the Blood at Signature Theater [2017] and Hamlet at St. Ann’s Warehouse [2020], awestruck at the blend of rigor, chemistry and collaboration that made these experiences possible. I felt eager to create, to experiment, to court risk.

Most important of all, theater taught me that we must lean on each other. The life of theatermakers, theaters and their audiences depends on us working collaboratively towards our united future. We must protect each other’s dignity. One does not have to look too far to witness the theatrics of daily life, whether that be in our politics, our communities or even on our phones. Today, as I address you in 2026, the dominant narrative from the highest seat in office, as well as our national leaders, is encouraging us to be cruel to each other. Their intent to erase history, misinform us and keep us at odds with one another is more clear than ever before. Their messaging is sinister, divisive and harmful. It is an assault on our collective dignity.

Despite the fearmongering, despite their deepest wish to separate ourselves from each other, it is our responsibility as theatermakers to have the courage to rewrite this narrative. In order to reclaim the narrative, we must turn to our foundation. Theater is foundational to many, if not all, of the ways we exchange stories in the world today. It is where we can seek more thoughtful provocations about our times, it is where our heartbeats synchronize, it is where we enter the dark to feel the light. We must be fearless and relentless in protecting this sacred space and to attempt at making the connection.

On this World Theater Day, may we recommit to the truth, may we guard our foundation, and may we keep humanity's bloodline alive, in and outside the theater.

[I don’t repost the World Theatre Day messages each year, but I have done so for several of the recent ones.  You can check back on these sets of messages: “World Theatre Day 2012” (24 April 2012), “World Theatre Day: 27 March 2022” (4 April 2022), “World Theatre Day 2023” (27 March 2023), and “World Theatre Day 2024” (28 March 2024).

[In addition, I’ve posted a version of a report on another ITI event, the 1986 Theatre of Nations festival in Baltimore, Maryland, the first and so far only appearance of TON in North America.  “Theatre of Nations: Baltimore, 1986,” which was originally written for The Drama Review in 1987, was republished on Rick On Theater on 10 November 2014.

[ITI, the International Theatre Institute, is an agency of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).]